Members of St. Margaret’s professional community recently visited Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab, experiencing the university’s virtual-reality technology and learning more about applications of VR in the classroom.

Stanford VHIL researches social interaction, and builds and tests applications which use VR to improve society. St. Margaret’s Director of Technology and Innovation Lynn Ozonian, Director of Library and Digital Literacy Angela Mackenzie, computer science teacher David Lin and technology support specialist Jason Tapie spent the day in Palo Alto touring the lab, experiencing its VR programs and talking to the research team about the use of VR for developing empathy.

One of VR programs created in the Stanford VHIL, “Becoming Homeless,” has been used by St. Margaret’s students in VR programming electives as well as the Upper School elective wealth, poverty and ethics class taught by Director of Equity and Inclusion Victor Cota.

After visiting the Stanford VHIL, the four also toured the Stanford d.school, then met with a team of educators at Castilleja School in Palo Alto to discuss innovation, curriculum and pedagogy.